It took until his 13th start as a Blue Jay but R.A. Dickey flashed his Cy Young form of a year ago, mesmerizing the San Francisco both on the mound and at the plate on Wednesday.

Dickey combined with the ninth-inning help from Casey Janssen to toss a two-hit, 4-0 shutout against the defending World Series champs and drove in the only run he would need with some trickery at the plate in the fifth inning.

“Dickey was just about perfect today,” said manager John Gibbons. “He had it all going on. In the strike zone the thing was really dancing. And he helped get that big inning going with that hit. He has got to feel good. That’s him at his best right there.”

Pablo Sandoval’s two-out, fourth-inning single and a ninth-inning one-out single to Gregor Blanco were the only hits Dickey allowed. The only other baserunners came on a leadoff walk by Hunter Pence in the eighth inning and another walk to Marco Scutaro in the ninth.

Toronto scored all of its runs in one fifth-inning flurry that included an RBI single by Jose Bautista and a two-run single by Mark DeRosa.

After four scoreless innings against Giants starter Barry Zito, the Blue Jays offence came alive in the strangest of ways in that fifth inning.

With one out, 41-year-old Henry Blanco, hitting .165, milked Zito for a walk. Dickey came to the plate and squared to bunt then, with both third baseman Sandoval and first baseman Brandon Belt charging, Dickey pulled the bat back and took a full swing, pulling the ball past Sandoval down the third base line. With left fielder Andres Torres shaded toward centre, it took a long time for him to retrieve the ball in the corner, allowing Blanco to chug around the bases to score.

“You play the game in your head before you ever get to the plate,” said Dickey. “At least you should.

“When I saw both Panda and Belt crashing at the same time, it was a slug-bunt all the way for me. I played it out in my mind what I was going to do if I felt those guys closing in on me. I had a lot of practice on that in the National League and I work on it in the cage. So it wasn’t a shock to me.”

Dickey later scored on Bautista’s single, just the slugger’s third base hit in this seven-game road trip. But the Jays weren’t done there. Later in the bat-around inning, with Bautista at third and Edwin Encarnacion at second, DeRosa drove them both home with a single to centre, making it 4-0.

The loss for Zito snapped a string of 13 consecutive victories at home, stretching back to August 2, 2012.

Meanwhile Dickey was dealing. With a knuckleball that ranged in speed from 63 m.p.h. to 81 and thrown consistently in the strike zone, the Giants hitters were off balance all day long.

“I just had a lot of late movement, down in the strike zone all day. I was changing speeds a lot. I was able to throw it at 63 or 64 m.p.h. for a strike and I was able to throw a 79-m.p.h. one for a strike,” said Dickey, who has pitched most of the season with an irritating knot in a muscle in his upper back.

“As I’ve gotten healthier, I feel like I’ve had the latitude to be able to do it. Before, it was a matter of mustering everything I could to survive an outing. Today I felt a little bit better.”

He was perfect through three innings, erasing the first 11 batters he faced before Sandoval touched him for a single with two out in the fourth.

From there Dickey rattled off 10 more consecutive outs before Pence walked to lead off the eighth.

“I grew into the outing,” he said. “I had a mediocre (knuckleball) in the pen and while playing catch. It didn’t have the big swings that it sometimes it can have but it was nice and late. You often fall into some bad patterns mechanically when you’re trying to compensate for an injury so it has taken a couple of outings for me to get back to my foundational mechanics which I felt like I had today.”

In the ninth inning, with one out, Blanco singled and Scutaro worked Dickey for a walk. That’s when manager John Gibbons summoned Janssen from the pen to get the final two outs. He got his 12th save on a game-ending double-play ball from Sandoval.

The victory allowed the Jays to escape San Francisco with a split of their two game series and head home after a 3-4 record in the seven game road trip.

“We’re looking forward to another offday,” said Gibbons. “It’s been a long tough trip. The day off will set us up for a tough weekend series ahead.”

Dickey stars in Jays shutout win over Giants

It took until his 13th start as a Blue Jay but R.A. Dickey flashed his Cy Young form of a year ago, mesmerizing the San Francisco Giants both on the mound and at the plate on Wednesday.

Dickey combined with the ninth-inning help from Casey Janssen to toss a two-hit, 4-0 shutout against the defending World Series champs and drove in the only run he would need with some trickery at the plate in the fifth inning.